this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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How about this then. While your neighbors are using wine, it attracts more commercial attention to develop the open source projects that you do actually use. It's so impactful that you measurably benefit directly from its contributions, like optimizations to the Linux kernel.
You don't have to agree with it, but you cannot deny the increased investment in open source projects it causes.
For a painfully blatant example see: Steam Deck.
Also for the binary blob purists, how do you feel about all that closed source firmware underpinning your pure world? Isn't it practically impossible to get completely open source firmware down to the silicon? And even then, do you trust the silicon? Are you running everything on FPGAs?
Hi! "Binary blob purist" here! Yes, it bothers us that so much firmware is proprietary, but we are working to fix that :).
It is possible to have fully free firmware on certain select devices.
The silicon is unchangeable, much like a chair is unchangeable. So being concerned about changing it isn't really productive. But, RISCV looks promising and a good remedy to the issue of not knowing what it does.
FPGAs would be nice but they aren't powerful enough yet.
But, at the same time, unless the silicon can make outside connections itself or modify behaviour (a la Intel ME), or has been updated with what is essentially software baked into it that can change it's behaviour on the fly, I'd say it can be trusted to do the computing you tell it to do and nothing more (again, excluding those processors where we know that it doesn't like those with the ME).